Pronounce Them Guilty
by framedforjack
Summary: For a moment, Jo Harvelle is not a ghost with chapped lips and old eyes, and he can hear her breathing: slow, soft, sobs.


Spoilers for Defending Your Life. Which you should have watched already, if you've been good boys and girls, so I'm not sure why I'm warning y'all.

**Disclaimer**: Oh don't mind me. This is just me...grieving. Also Supernatural doesn't belong to me. If it did, Jo would have never died. But her send offs, I suppose, are tragically stunning. I just want her to come back to life, if you please.  
>Re: Updated because there were some errors that were bugging me. Obviously I should stop with this writing-past-my-bedtime thing. So if you see a new bit tossed in, well, yeah. I added a little too. Sue me.<p>

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><p>The touch of a dead girl is the best thing he's felt in awhile; he leans into her palm and pretends it's warm and solid. For a moment, Jo Harvelle is not a ghost with chapped lips and old eyes, and he can hear her breathing: slow, soft, sobs.<br>His lighter drops to the floor and he is alone.

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><p>He's not sure why he said fades.<p>

She doesn't fade, she flickers, in and out, in a blink of an eye. He keeps waiting for her to flicker back, but she doesn't. This is all the goodbye he gets, and it's so much better, and worse, then their last (first) kiss.

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><p>They don't really talk about it again. They just drive on, and Dean weighs Sam's words. His brother is...happy. It satisfies him, somewhere deep down in his gut, the part that's watched Sam toss and turn in restless sleep and mourned the kid his little brother barely got to be. But at the same time he feels very alone. It's enough though. If Sam can find some peace, Dean reasons, against the nagging voices at the back of his mind, so can he. This is enough to keep him going, to keep driving and walking and talking and shooting rock-salt from a gun.<p>

The whiskey will help with the rest.

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><p>For a minute, she can almost smell the gasoline. Not the memory of it because that's fresh in her mind; the last thing she'd ever breathed, probably still floating in her nonexistent lungs.<p>

His salt ring is scattered to the wind, the grit of it crisp under her boots like fresh snow and his lighter is heavy in her palm; she doesn't want to flick it but her thumb rubs the edge anyway.

She doesn't want to flick it, but she wants Dean, wants him as bad as she ever did, and beneath the voice that is hers, there's a trembling awakening of what could turn her into a spirit bent of revenge. Death is very clear, but death is unchanging and Jo will not grow anymore, not now. This is the only thing that can change her. Without it's touch, she will be as she was, a hunter, and a girl who loved Dean Winchester, helplessly, with every fiber of her being. But with it? She will burn them down, without a second thought, and wrap his weary, tattered soul in her arms. She will leave his corpse, charred, possibly beyond recognition for Sam to find. And maybe, she'll take the brother too. Maybe then, they will all rest, walk arm in arm to the light of heaven that she can't seem to find, instead of leaving her to linger here in the bottom of Dean's shot glasses.

And then the compulsion fades, and Jo remembers what it's like to breathe air, sweet and clean. His cheek is warm and he is beautiful and he is alive and she is...not. This is what she died for. Live, she wills, and she wills it with every part of her that ever loved him, that loves him still.

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><p>She fades because it's time too. Because if she stays they will have to waste her, and she doesn't want to be punched full of rock salt and metal again. Because even if she's dead, she can feel everything: her grief and her love and her hopes and her joy, and it hurts like her heart is still beating, and her mind still churning, her lungs still...<p>

She fades because he has to die eventually; they all do. But she won't be the one to kill him; won't pull the trigger and send the bullet flying. She refuses, and flickers out of sight.

She sleeps, and waits, and it's enough.

Time will help with the rest.


End file.
